Share the Trail

 Bikes are cool.  Really, I've tested, and running is much, much warmer, so in Thursday's heat (again), I left the running shoes at home and headed out on a mountain bike,  Granted, the increased airflow of a road ride is even cooler, but somehow, no, road bikes just aren't as cool, but enough with the mixed adjectives.

In February, I took my initial long draught of the 650B Koolaid.  As some of you may know, I never really gave up on 26" wheels.  This isn't because I think they're secretly easier, faster, or that their pluses outweigh their detractions, but rather firstly because I had them, and I usually consider riding a bike I own better than attempting the same on one I imagine.  Dreamy bikes just don't do it for me.

So why 27.5"?  For a myriad of answers to that as well as a hundred more saying the opposite, well, you're on a device with an internet connection that would be more than happy to tell you--definitively.  So why am I on 27.5"?  That's a question I might be able to answer slightly better.  My first true mountain bike was bought in 1985 after a couple years riding a 20" wheel bike on sylvan explorations with my dad who was aboard an old newspaper bike from his youth.  We'd always been hikers, and these outing were treated like hikes, just with a bit more ground covered, but then we learned blokes in California had invented the same idea and even produced bikes specifically intended for the purpose.

We purchased our first mountain bikes, and they were long, and then added a little extra length onto that for a good, long measure.  Added to this, the 24" wheel model we'd ordered for me and my late-bloomer runt stature never arrived, so eventually my dad suggested I try the smallest size 26" wheel bike, which at that time was an 18" frame.  Many years later and over a foot taller, I ride maybe one size bigger.  It was long for me and them quite some bit more.

But I learned to ride it, learned to ride very stretched out, reaching for the bars not just with my arms, but also my back in a near horizontal position.  I learned to ride in the woods on a long bike for me, and I did learn, and that position, as well as the stability of a long wheelbase, seems to work for me.  I've often suggest that a skilled rider can use all sorts of tricks to disrupt the path of a bike and make it turn, but there is very little one can do to make a machine more stable.  I like long stable bikes.

Eventually, the bike industry agreed and they started to once again make mountain bikes with the slack angles of my first, but by the time they figured this out (as well as the graces of a single chainring which I adopted late in 2002, although admitted at first because I had only a rear Suntour shifter), they had also adopted larger wheels, which it's hard to drop below 70 degrees for a head angle on with a 26" wheeled bike that was intended for pedaling both up and down the hill.  But 27.5" is really close to 26", and the difference is even smaller once you compare to 26.5", which is a truer measure of the smaller size.  Yes, 650B is really close to 26", most notably separated by heaps of marketing.

So really, why not 27.5" for me, especially since it was February when five year old bikes that retailed for $460 sell for far, far less.  Granted from that original bike, I've steady swapped out all but the headset, seatpost, and nearly bald rear tire, but trust me, even for just a frame, and a good one at that, I consider it a darn good deal.  And the swapping continued yesterday morning, I put on a 29" front wheel.  I think mullet is an arse backwards name for something with the bigger thing up front, and I also consider the mullet coiffure a heroically bad look for someone who had survived long enough to develop a bald patch of scalp like mine, but call it what you will, I liked how the bike rode.  Sure, the big front wheel rolls easily while maintaining the nimble-little-tyke trait out back, but really, I believe the 1 degree slacker angles that resulted are what really pleased me.  Oh, and it was a bike!

With the front wheel lower than the back, my preferred inclination for riding a bike, you can hardly see the difference.

But sharing the trail, that's where my "technology" update started.  I rode the canal trails yesterday with their smooth rolling twisty bits that are a good test of how updated geometry handles.  Twisty bits also mean I don't always have a tremendous view of exactly where my tread is about to tread, so it was with pleasure that I saw the snake dart into the woods, proclaiming, "Don't tread on me."  Oh wait, no, that wasn't what I heard.  It was a rattle!  Years ago, I bunny hopped a rattlesnake which was given less warning combined with a disinclination to yield the trail, and we both managed the experience intact, and I quickly dropped my bike the warn off the friend that was following me!

Yesterday was a reptilian type of day.  A number of twisty bits later, I found this other user partaking of the trail system.  Different defenses made for more photogenic documentation, but most happily, I wasn't trying to fix a snake bike in my leg instead of a tire!  Share the trails; we all belong there!